CURCH ETHICS PERMEATE PRIVATE NOT PUBLIC HOSPITALS

The Irish Times - Controversy about ethical codes overstates church influence in healthcare. Agitation over the Catholic bishops Code of Ethical Standards for Healthcare in recent weeks was greatly exaggerated. Relevant healthcare facilities are not run by the bishops but by religious congregations and, as the bishops’ spokesman Martin Long pointed out, “the governance of individual hospitals and the application of an ethos in these institutions is a matter for the board or the religious order concerned”. To illustrate the guarded independence of such hospital boards, you need only go back to the 2013 Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act, which set out the circumstances where an abortion may be performed in Ireland...>>>